By Mark Chael

3M, headquartered in Minnesota, recently announced that it has acquired the U.K. biotechnology firm, Acolyte Biomedica Ltd.  According to the press release dated February 14, 2007, this acquisition is a natural extension of 3M’s infection prevention technologies and 3M expects to continue expanding their diagnostic testing platforms through complementary acquisitions such as these.

On esp@cenet, Acolyte is listed as the applicant for at least 3 patent application families related to microbiological testing.  Acolyte’s website states that they hold the "exclusive worldwide rights to AK Rapid® technology in clinical microbiology."  Additional information about the adenylate kinase (AK) detection system can be found here.  One advantage of the AK Rapid® system is that it significantly reduces the time that it takes to identify dangerous bacterial strains, particularly strains resistant to one or more antibiotics.